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PHP ─ Date and Time


Dates are so much part of everyday life that it becomes easy to work with them without thinking. PHP also provides powerful tools for date arithmetic that make manipulating dates easy.

Getting the Time Stamp with time()

PHP's time() function gives you all the information that you need about the current date and time. It requires no arguments but returns an integer.

The integer returned by time() represents the number of seconds elapsed since midnight GMT on January 1, 1970. This moment is known as the UNIX epoch, and the number of seconds that have elapsed since then is referred to as a time stamp.

<?php
print time();
?>

It will produce the following result:

1468926906

This is something difficult to understand. But PHP offers excellent tools to convert a time stamp into a form that humans are comfortable with.

Converting a Time Stamp with getdate()

The function getdate() optionally accepts a timestamp and returns an associative array containing information about the date. If you omit the time stamp, it works with the current time stamp as returned by time().

The following table lists the elements contained in the array returned by getdate().
KeyDescriptionExample
secondsSeconds past the minutes (0-59)20
minutesMinutes past the hour (0 - 59)29
hoursHours of the day (0 - 23)22
mdayDay of the month (1 - 31)11
wdayDay of the week (0 - 6)4
monMonth of the year (1 - 12)7
yearYear (4 digits)1997
ydayDay of year ( 0 - 365 )19
weekdayDay of the weekThursday
monthMonth of the yearJanuary
0Timestamp948370048
Now you have complete control over date and time. You can format this date and time in whatever format you want.

Example

Try out the following example.

<?php
$date_array = getdate();
foreach ( $date_array as $key => $val )
{
print "$key = $val<br />";
}
$formated_date = "Today's date: ";
$formated_date .= $date_array[mday] . "/";
$formated_date .= $date_array[mon] . "/";
$formated_date .= $date_array[year];
print $formated_date;
?>

It will produce the following result:

second = 6
minutes = 15
hours = 11
mday = 19
wday = 2
mon = 7
year = 2016
yday = 200
weekday = Tuesday
monday = July
0 = 1468926906
Today's date:19/7/2016

Converting a Time Stamp with date()

The date() function returns a formatted string representing a date. You can exercise an enormous amount of control over the format that date() returns with a string argument that you must pass to it.

date(format,timestamp)

The date() optionally accepts a time stamp if omitted, then current date and time will be used. Any other data you include in the format string passed to date() will be included in the return value.

The following table lists the codes that a format string can contain:
FormatDescriptionExample
a'am' or 'pm' lowercasepm
A'AM' or 'PM' uppercasePM
dDay of month, a number with leading zeroes20
DDay of week (three letters)Thu
FMonth nameJanuary
hHour (12-hour format - leading zeroes)12
HHour (24-hour format - leading zeroes)22
gHour (12-hour format - no leading zeroes)12
GHour (24-hour format - no leading zeroes)22
iMinutes ( 0 - 59 )23
jDay of the month (no leading zeroes20
l (Lower 'L')Day of the weekThursday
LLeap year ('1' for yes, '0' for no)1
mMonth of year (number - leading zeroes)1
MMonth of year (three letters)Jan
rThe RFC 2822 formatted dateThu, 21 Dec
2000 16:01:07
+0200
nMonth of year (number - no leading zeroes)2
sSeconds of hour20
UTime stamp948372444
yYear (two digits)06
YYear (four digits)2006
zDay of year (0 - 365)206
ZOffset in seconds from GMT+5
Example

Try out the following example.

<?php
print date("m/d/y G.i:s<br>", time());
print "Today is ";
print date("j of F Y, \a\\t g.i a", time());
?>

It will produce following result:

07/19/16 11.15:06 Today is 19 20 16f July 2016.at 11.15 am

Hope you have a good understanding of how to format date and time according to your requirement. For your reference a complete list of all the date and time functions is given in PHP Date & Time Functions.
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